One-upmanship between the Congress and the BJP has adversely impacted the oeuvre of one of India’s foremost wildlife documentary filmmakers.
Environmental filmmaker Mike Pandey’s attempts to make a documentary film on the vanishing Indian tiger have been repeatedly spurned by Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Pandey, with over 300 national and international awards to his credit, admitted he met Mr Chaohan several times over the project.
“I met him seven to eight times requesting him to waive aside their camera charges of `40,000 per day which is being charged to shoot a film inside a tiger reserve but he declined saying if he granted me permission, it would set a precedent and other filmmakers would come to him with similar requests,” Pandey said. MP has four tiger reserves, namely Bandavgarh, Kanha, Panna and the Pench tiger reserve. “We planned to use two cameras for our shooting which comes to `80,000 per day. We had allocated two-and-a-half months in Madhya Pradesh and that works out to almost `1 crore which is unaffordable,” Pandey said.
Pandey believes the real reason for Mr Chouhan turning down his request is because the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre was a major sponsor for this film.